Digital content management: the search for a content management system
Pages | 355-365 |
Date | 01 December 2004 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830410570467 |
Published date | 01 December 2004 |
Author | Yan Han |
Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Digital content
management: the search
for a content
management system
Yan Han
The author
Yan Han is Systems Librarian, University of Arizona Library,
Tucson, Arizona, USA.
Keywords
Content management, Operating systems, Preservation,
Information systems, Digital storage
Abstract
Digital content management system is a software system that
provides preservation, organization and dissemination services
for digital collections. By adapting the systems analysis process,
the University of Arizona Library analyzed its needs and
developed content management system requirements for finding
a suitable information system that addresses the increasing
needs of digital content management. Dozens of commercial
and open source candidates were examined to match against
the requirements. This article provides detailed analysis of three
major players (Greenstone, Fedora, and DSpace) in key areas of
digital content management: preservation, metadata, access,
and system features based on the needs of the University of
Arizona Library. Thispaper describes the process used to analyze
and evaluate potential candidates and includes results of
analysis to illuminate the process.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
The need for digital content management
The University of Arizona Library has developed
quite a few interesting digital projects, such as
Little Cowpuncher and Southwest projects. The
Little Cowpuncher[1] is a mimeographed school
newspaper written by Anglo and
Mexican-American ranch children from 1932 to
1943 in Southern Arizona. The Southwest
projects[2] consist of multiple unique southern
Arizona collections such as South Arizona music
and folk arts. These initiatives reflect unique
southwest history and attract thousands of visitors
around the world. At the same time we are the
victims of our success, as each digital project was
initiated and was completed on a case-by-case
basis. These projects were created with different
tools using a variety of technologies such as
HTML, XML and PDF, and are not based on a
cohesive approach. Furthermore, the library needs
to store and publish external content to meet our
customers’ needs.
The current situation poses technical, financial
and management problems. From the view of
library technical staff, this approach requires
various hardware and/or software to mount the
content, which requires them to master a variety of
computing technologies to do the routine
management such as backup and updates, and
thus increases job difficulty and workload. From
the view of financial analysts, it is difficult to
understand and track costs related to a project.
This makes it difficult to predict the cost of future
projects. From the view of management,
distributed storage and individual access to the
content also results in difficult issues in system
management. For example, there are system
security questions such as “Who should access
what? Who should belong to the administrator
group?”, and network management questions such
as “What bandwidth will this server provide? How
much storage will that server need?” As few of the
digital initiative activities were pursued in a
coordinated manner, the absence of overall
coordination and planning resulted in:
.the lack of consistent digital preservation
standards to ensure the projects’ accessibility
in perpetuity;
Library Hi Tech
Volume 22 · Number 4 · 2004 · pp.355-365
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN 0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/07378830410570467
The paper is based on the work of the content
management subgroup at the Digital Library and
Information Systems Team at the University of
Arizona Library. The author would like to thank
Krisellen Maloney for her support and advice for
both the project and this paper as well as
Paul Bracke’s advice. The author would also like to
thank other subgroup members, Jeremy Frumkin,
Warner Onstine, Kevin Chen, and Eulalia Roel, for
their great work in drafting, organizing the CMS
requirements, and evaluating candidates.
355
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